


My Heart Stumbles

by robotsfighting



Category: Glee
Genre: Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 22:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsfighting/pseuds/robotsfighting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine introspection. A moment in summer with Kurt, looking back at the things that have brought him to this point. (The title comes from "Awake My Soul" by Mumford and Sons.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart Stumbles

Blaine let his hair grow out when the school year ended. He left his gel in his medicine cabinet and let it tangle and curl against the back of his neck. In part, it was because the gel would melt in the heat anyway, and leave him odd-looking and uncomfortable – but there was also the fact that Kurt would run his fingernails against Blaine’s scalp in patterns that made him shudder and go boneless. They would lie together in Kurt’s bed while Finn was at Rachel’s house and his parents were working, just breathing the warmth of each other, tucked into the gaps of the other, as close as they could get without blending.

Summer afforded this incredible freedom to be together and alone and without expectations, and it was the best feeling Blaine had ever experienced. It centered him, tethered him close to Kurt in a way that they hadn’t yet felt. It made the feeling of Kurt’s soft fingers trailing warm across his cheeks, his jaw, his throat – made the feeling significant, something cerebral and heightened, Kurt just lying with his head perched on his arm and watching the path of his fingers down to Blaine’s collar and then back up again, to the bridge of his nose, his eyes. Just the wandering of Kurt’s fingers, the small smile lingering over his mouth.

This was something that Blaine wanted but he’d never known existed; his fingers curled loose in Kurt’s shirt, these hours unmoving, sometimes sleeping or talking or just silently watching, memorizing the fall of Kurt’s eyelashes against his cheeks when he closed his eyes. He liked to feel the rise and fall of Kurt’s chest beneath his hand, liked the feeling of Kurt’s heart against his palm.

He didn’t think that it was possible to be this close to another person, physically, emotionally. Before Kurt, it just wasn’t a part of his life. Family was dinner at six, recounting their days, light conversation between neat bites. Friends were at first nonexistent and then – difficult. Because going to Dalton was like being introduced to an alternate reality, where people actually wanted to find out who you were, and Blaine had never come across that before. He didn’t know the answer to that question. He made it up as he went along. For the most part, he got it dramatically wrong. He became his showface and filled out his uniform with the person he expected was supposed to wear it.

Then, Kurt. (“You’re emotionally _stunted_ , Blaine, so let’s get _that_ out of the way.”) And Kurt’s family was Friday night dinners with laughing and shouting and stealing warm breadsticks from each other’s plates. Kurt’s friends were an offered Secret Service perimeter and a serenade at a wedding and sleepovers in footie pajamas. Kurt knew who he was, knew how to be a person, and he shone with that knowledge constantly. It was beautiful and the scariest thing Blaine had ever seen.

Because Kurt didn’t give up and accept that fact that Blaine was Dapper and that was pretty much all of him. Kurt wanted to dig beneath that, and Blaine had no idea what existed beneath that, because he hadn’t lifted the trapdoor in a very long time. It was very possible that everything had rotted in his absence. Or that it was bare altogether.

But Kurt had managed to crowbar in and root around a little.

And it was interesting. Because Kurt would find things and hold them up to the light to show Blaine, and a lot of the time Blaine _liked_ those things. He couldn’t remember why he had packed them away. So there started growing this neat little pile of things that Kurt found inside of him, things that Blaine wanted to use again.

It was like putting a puzzle back together, with their fingers bumping as they tried to fit the pieces in.

So this became what intimacy was. This thing that Blaine never really knew existed, or at least a thing he never thought could exist for him; he’d dug that cellar with his own hands and boxed himself away for a reason, and he could remember the feeling of a dress shoe to his stomach. He could remember the silence at the dinner table when he had casually brought up the possibility that he might be gay. But intimacy did end up existing for him, outside of everything else, away from the rest of his life, because Kurt appeared on a staircase out of uniform and smiled during _Teenage Dream_ and never stopped insisting that Blaine was more than the non-person he thought he was.

And it was terrifying. Being open, being emotionally available, being an integral part of someone else’s life – it petrified him. He had hardly been a part of his _own_ life for so long that having someone expect so much from him—

But there was also the converse. There was Kurt waiting for him to trip over his own problems and go sprawling, waiting to catch him because he knew he could hold the weight. That kind of thing – a safety net, insurance – was mindblowing.

So he watched the trace of Kurt’s fingers, the way they slowed as Kurt’s breathing did, his eyes slipping closed, his hand stilling to cup Blaine’s cheek when he was too close to sleep to continue tracing Blaine’s brow, the shell of his ear. And Blaine smiled, his heart huge and uncomfortable in his chest, and he shifted forward to press his lips against Kurt’s forehead.

“Have I mentioned lately,” he mumbled idly against Kurt’s skin, “how incredibly in love with you I am?”

Kurt hummed, his hand slipping down to wrap loose around Blaine’s wrist. “Not in the last ten minutes,” he sighed, then opened his eyes and smiled, warm and happy. “You could fix that.”

Blaine grinned back. Then he shifted forward again and kissed Kurt properly, through a surprised laugh that made his heart swell all the more and strain against the cage of his ribs. This was where he was supposed to be, and it was maybe worth all of the digging and the hiding. It was worth it, maybe, to be pulled back into the light by this boy, who never took “I’m defective” for an answer, and who, with every tug towards the sun, had made it easier to follow.


End file.
